Kid Buu's regeneration?

[Toriyama Boss]

Does it ever state why Buu couldn't regenerate from Goku's final Genki Dama? Was it because Buu was evil? Could that be the reason why his regeneration didn't work? Or was it the energy the bomb produced. I mean he was easily regenerating from all of Super Saiyan 3 Goku's attacks.

Thanks for the input.

Edit: I am also wondering what does the Daizenshuu state about Kid Buu's regeneration...

[Bussani]

Probably similar to Cell. If you blast him completely to bits (aka atoms?) he probably won't come back. It just takes a lot to actually do that. That's what I'd assume, anyway.

[Toriyama Boss]

I thought Super Saiyan Goku would be powerful enough to do that right? But not even he could do it.

[Bussani]

I thought Super Saiyan Goku would be powerful enough to do that right? But not even he could do it.

It depends how powerful Buu is. Most of the time, your defence is based on the level of your ki. Kid Buu's must have been strong enough to allow at least part of himself to survive the blast as a pink blob of goop, then regenerate from that?

[Toriyama Boss]

Well, Super Saiyan Goku kept hitting the guy with attacks, Kid Buu would smile and regenerate like nothing happened at all.

[Bussani]

Well, Super Saiyan Goku kept hitting the guy with attacks, Kid Buu would smile and regenerate like nothing happened at all.

Is that any different to Cell, really? I think the only difference is Kid Buu's regeneration is a bit more magical than Cell, who at least needed his core to be in tact. Buu seemed to be okay so long as any of his pink gooeyness survived, so minor injuries were nothing to him.

The Genki Dama was the most powerful thing they hit him with, and Goku added all of his restored energy to it as well. That must have been enough to overcome Buu so much that nothing of him survived. I suppose it's possible that the Genki Dama somehow 'purified' Buu's spirit in the process too, which might have had some effect on his defeat, but...I have no proof for that.

[Herms]

Does it ever state why Buu couldn't regenerate from Goku's final Genki Dama? Was it because Buu was evil? Could that be the reason why his regeneration didn't work? Or was it the energy the bomb produced. I mean he was easily regenerating from all of Super Saiyan 3 Goku's attacks.

Thanks for the input.

Edit: I am also wondering what does the Daizenshuu state about Kid Buu's regeneration...

After Buu is destroyed, the narrator says that he was "literally annihilated, without a single cell remaining", so presumably that was what was needed to destroy him all along. Here's what Daizenshuu 7's technique dictionary's entry on regenertion says about Buu:

Cell inherited this ability, and could always regenerate as long as the nucleus in his head remained. In contrast to this, Majin Buu could always completely restore himself, even if he just a single piece of flesh remained, just so long as he wasn’t totally annihilated

[Rocketman]

Gotenks vaporized Buu and he still regenerated.

If you count filler, Vegetto hit Buu with a (kind-sorta-)Big Bang Attack and he still regenerated.

So the answer is "Mr. Toriyama finally gnawed through the shackels they had chaining him to his desk and escaped; after they couldn't find him, Toei got the guy who wrote the endings for movies 2, 3, 4, and 7 to come in and scribble out an ending".

[Herms]

Gotenks vaporized Buu and he still regenerated.

Piccolo says that they should have used ki to completely wipe Buu out, as Gotenks merely blew him to pieces and then burned the pieces individually (you can even still see burning chunks of flesh; he clearly wasn't completely annihilated). So that meshes pretty well with the Genki-Dama, a giant ball of ki, being the thing to finally wipe Buu out completely.

[Bussani]

Gotenks vaporized Buu and he still regenerated.

If you count filler, Vegetto hit Buu with a (kind-sorta-)Big Bang Attack and he still regenerated.

So the answer is "Mr. Toriyama finally gnawed through the shackels they had chaining him to his desk and escaped; after they couldn't find him, Toei got the guy who wrote the endings for movies 2, 3, 4, and 7 to come in and scribble out an ending".

I'm assuming in both those cases he wasn't completely annihilated, as Hermes put it. Remember, Cell self destructed himself and still came back from it, and Buu's regeneration is even stronger than that. If he really had to he could probably just break a piece of his body off and protect it with a large amount of ki, then regenerate from that.

So either Genki Dama + SSJ Goku together were stronger than everything else so far, Kid Buu was weaker than the Buus those others faced, Genki Dama had some special property that could destroy Buu (though I doubt this since it still wasn't enough until Goku got his power back, went SSJ and powered up the attack even further) or a bit of all of these.

Edit:

Piccolo says that they should have used ki to completely wipe Buu out, as Gotenks merely blew him to pieces and then burned the pieces individually. So that meshes pretty well with the Genki-Dama, a giant ball of ki, being the thing to finally wipe Buu out completely.

Ah, I'd forgotten about that part. What exactly did Gotenks use to burn the pieces? And did it show where/how Buu regenerated from that time?

Maybe it's not enough to even destroy his body, but you have to destroy his ki as well?

[Toriyama Boss]

Does it ever state why Buu couldn't regenerate from Goku's final Genki Dama? Was it because Buu was evil? Could that be the reason why his regeneration didn't work? Or was it the energy the bomb produced. I mean he was easily regenerating from all of Super Saiyan 3 Goku's attacks.

Thanks for the input.

Edit: I am also wondering what does the Daizenshuu state about Kid Buu's regeneration...

After Buu is destroyed, the narrator says that he was "literally annihilated, without a single cell remaining", so presumably that was what was needed to destroy him all along. Here's what Daizenshuu 7's technique dictionary's entry on regenertion says about Buu:

Cell inherited this ability, and could always regenerate as long as the nucleus in his head remained. In contrast to this, Majin Buu could always completely restore himself, even if he just a single piece of flesh remained, just so long as he wasn’t totally annihilated

Ah, beautiful Herms. You saved the day again!

So basically what it states you have to literally remove Majin Buu from existence to kill him completely? Does the Daizenshuu state Genki Dama is that powerful?

[Bussani]

So basically what it states you have to literally remove Majin Buu from existence to kill him completely? Does the Daizenshuu state Genki Dama is that powerful?

Well, his purified spirit at least survived to become Uub, right? But other than that yeah, that's what I was trying to say. I'm curious about what Herms said about him regenerating after Gotenks burnt all his pieces though, it's impressive that even that wasn't enough, unless a piece hid and survived.

[Dayspring]

Cell can regenerate as long as a single solitary cell survives. I get the impression that Buu is like that, only at a higher level: as long as a single cell exists, dead or alive, Buu can regenerate. In other words, dead cells in Buu will revive themselves, and then act in the same fashion as Cell's do. That's why being vaporized didn't kill Buu; the remnants of dead cells were in the smoke. Otherwise, what's producing the smoke?

So personally, I think it was the combination of the genkidama's evil-hunting nature and its power-size that destroyed Buu. Since Buu was pure evil, the evil-hunting nature of a genkidama weakened him magically enough so that dead cells couldn't regenerate, while the might of that particular genkidama obliterated him.

[Bussani]

Cell can regenerate as long as a single solitary cell survives. I get the impression that Buu is like that, only at a higher level: as long as a single cell exists, dead or alive, Buu can regenerate. In other words, dead cells in Buu will revive themselves, and then act in the same fashion as Cell's do. That's why being vaporized didn't kill Buu; the remnants of dead cells were in the smoke. Otherwise, what's producing the smoke?

So personally, I think it was the combination of the genkidama's evil-hunting nature and its power-size that destroyed Buu. Since Buu was pure evil, the evil-hunting nature of a genkidama weakened him magically enough so that dead cells couldn't regenerate, while the might of that particular genkidama obliterated him.

This could be the case. Now that I think about it, I seem to remember reading somewhere that he could regenerate even from vapour, aka smoke. This makes some sense given his nature, he even turned into pink smoke at one point, didn't he? And Evil Buu came out of Fat Buu in the form of smoke too.

[mAcChaos]

Man, imagine what would've happened if Buu just took a little piece of himself and hit it somewhere before he went out to fight.

[Herms]

This could be the case. Now that I think about it, I seem to remember reading somewhere that he could regenerate even from vapour, aka smoke.

That's what actually happens during his fight with Gotenks. Gotenks blows him to pieces with the Super Ghost Kamikaze attack, burns the pieces with a ki beam from his finger, then stomps on the smoking piles with his foot. He and Piccolo think they've won, until all the smoke from the burning pieces assembles and reforms into Buu. Piccolo then says they should have used their ki to completely wipe him out.

[Bussani]

That's what actually happens during his fight with Gotenks. Gotenks blows him to pieces with the Super Ghost Kamikaze attack, burns the pieces with a ki beam from his finger, then stomps on the smoking piles with his foot. He and Piccolo think they've won, until all the smoke from the burning pieces assembles and reforms into Buu. Piccolo then says they should have used their ki to completely wipe him out.

I see. Thanks Herms, you sure remember a lot of details about the show.

I was just thinking. Speaking from the point of view of normal physics, you should never be able to completely annihilate something. You can get rid of particles of matter, but you get energy in the process. You can get rid of energy, but only by creating new particles of matter. The two are inevitably interconnected.

Now, ki itself probably doesn't obey these laws, which might be the key. From what you've said, it seems that Buu can come back so long as any part of his physical body remains, even in the form of gas or just loose particles maybe. So the way to defeat him might be to convert all of that mass into energy, like getting particles of matter and antimatter to destroy each other. All that would be left would be energy, which might be the point where he can't come back.

Of course, physics like this might have no place in Dragon Ball. But either way it seems that enough ki has the ability to annihilate something to the point that even dust doesn't remain.

[goodguy777]

I wonder if Gohan can totally annihilate Chibi-Buu.

[Casual Matt]

I thought Majin Boo could only regenerate while Piccolo was a part of him.

Didn't he just bring his molecules back together and reform otherwise?

[Captain Awesome]

I wonder if Gohan can totally annihilate Chibi-Buu.

Well Ultimate Gohan is certainly stronger than Chibi-Boo, but considering it took the Genki energy of everyone on Earth (including Gohan) to annihilate him, I doubt Gohan on his own had enough power to wipe him out entirely.